Ban on herbicide unlikely

THE Tasmanian Cancer Council is investigating whether atrazine,
the second-most used agricultural chemical in the country, has
pushed up cancer rates, as the pesticides regulator prepares to
reject alarming new evidence and rubber-stamp its continued
use.

It is the third current Australian inquiry into the chemical,
which was banned in the European Union two years ago but is widely
used in all states here to control weeds in agriculture.

The National Health and Medical Research Council announced in
July a review of its guidelines on atrazine in drinking water,
which allow 80 times more than the European Union's limits. It
plans to report by the end of 2009. However, the the Australian
Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, which has reassessed
the chemical for more than a decade, is poised to dash activists'
hopes of an Australian ban or a strict tightening of regulations on
how farmers use atrazine.

Dr Alison Bleaney, a GP who has campaigned to have atrazine
investigated after research suggesting a link between its increased
use and a rise in cancer incidence in her region around St Helens
on the Tasmanian north-east coast, said the Cancer Council's
inquiry was long overdue.

The Cancer Council's decision follows a visit by Tyrone Hayes, a
specialist in zoology and toxicology at the University of
California at Berkeley, who argues there is evidence that low
levels of atrazine in water could chemically castrate male frogs by
interfering with their hormonal levels, raising questions about its
effect on human health through drinking water.

At a forum in Canberra in June, the pesticides watchdog heard
Professor Hayes say that evidence points to atrazine being a
carcinogen. Its manufacturer, Syngenta, rejects this, although it
refused to answer the Herald's questions about the research
or provide studies that indicate the pesticide is not harmful.
Instead it released a fact sheet, which says in part: "there is
currently no scientific justification for the ban of atrazine
products".

The US Environmental Protection Agency declared it a human
carcinogen seven years ago, but reversed that view three years
later to say it was not likely to cause cancer in people.

Professor Hayes was unable to sway the pesticides authority at
the Canberra meeting. A letter written by the authority's acting
chief executive officer, Eva Bennet-Jenkins, obtained by the
Herald, said he presented unpublished information that had
not yet been assessed.

In a statement on its website, the authority foreshadowed that
it would not ban the chemical because it "has not seen any direct
evidence that atrazine is a risk to human health". "With the forum
now over, the APVMA now proposes to complete the current review and
implement revised label instructions, in order to reduce the
likelihood of atrazine finding its way into the waterways," it
said.

Yet a study published in May in the peer-reviewed online journal
Environmental Health Perspectives, co-authored by Professor
Hayes and academics from Kyushu University in Japan, showed
atrazine and its related herbicides caused cancer and reproductive
problems.

Another study, also published in the journal, established a link
between a mother's exposure to the breakdown products of atrazine
and altered breast development in female offspring.

The marine ecologist Marcus Scammell, who also attended the
Canberra forum, described the authority's claim that there was no
evidence that atrazine posed a risk as "flawed".